Page 12 of How (Not) to Conjure a Boyfriend
“I mean, sort of.” I shrug.
She stares me down again, still squinting.
“I’m sorry,” Kaitlynn blurts into the quiet and puts her pointer finger to her lips like she’s in deep thought. “Okay, but…like… How?”
It’s rare to see Kaity at a loss for words, but here we are. I’m not sure if I should be hurt or amused.
“That’s a whole story,” I tell her, scratching the side of my head. On my phone, in the little space that shows me, I notice my curly hair is a little out of place, so I run a hand through it. Better.
She wiggles and settles back onto her hands. “It’s tea time then.”
I take a deep breath, trying to remember everything that went down tonight. It feels like a lot. I’m still trying to make sense of it all. Sitting through Thanksgiving dinner with Mom in near silence except for the occasional, and very awkwardly timed, question about school was excruciating. She did ask where I’d been, and I told her. I just left out some key details. Such as the boyfriend part. I didn’t dare bring that up. She knows I’ve been crushing on Hayden, but she would have had too many questions I don’t have answers to.
“So…” I drag it out as you do at the beginning of any good story, and this one’s a doozy. “Hayden came to the shop—”
“Like he always does,” Kaitlynn interrupts.
I let her finish before continuing, “—before we closed. Yeah. But tonight was different. Like hetalktalked to me.”
“Toyou?” Kaitlynn questions.
“Yes!” I defend my words, then backtrack. “I mean, to us. Me and Landon.”
“Right,” she sighs.
I roll my eyes. “That’s just the beginning. He was really sweet and— Oh, and he got something different tonight instead of his Sinnercake. He got one of the pumpkin breads thatImade.Yeah, but like I said, he was sweet and even told me, wellus, to have a good Thanksgiving—”
“Like any half-decent human being,” Kaitlynn cuts in again. “When does this get interesting?”
“Can I just tell my story?” I beg.
She looks away all sus and pops her eyes wide. It’s her way of saying,Damn, fine. I make a mental note to try to cut it down a little. I do have a tendency to ramble sometimes.
“AsI was saying,” I start back up. “He wished us a good Thanksgiving and then was about to leave. But Landon had mopped the dining area. Hayden slipped and fell. Like hard.”
The way Kaitlynn’s eyes pop is probably about like mine when it happened. “Oh!”
“Yeah. He fell and hit his head on a table. I think he had a seizure. I held him so he wouldn’t hurt his head any worse, and then I ended up at the hospital with him.”
“Wait, you held him?” she asks.
I can’t help but smile. “Yeah. But not, like, romantic or anything.”
“Of course,” she laughs.
I left out the part about Landon freaking out, but it’s not important to the story and she’s already impatient enough.
“Where was I? You distracted me.” I grin, the thought of my hands wrapped around him for that brief moment running through my head, trying to ignore the fact that he was shaking uncontrollably.
“You went to the hospital with him…”
“Yes.” I nod. “Well, they took him back but wouldn’t let me go with them at first. But I snuck back and Regina—she’s one of the nurses I worked with over the summer, remember?” I askbut don’t wait for a reply. “Well, she thought I was his boyfriend, which is sort of my fault, but—”
“Nope, enbyfriend,” Kaitlynn says before I get a chance to tell her I did correct them.
“Yeah, exactly. So his family came and she told them!”
“Oh.” Kaitlynn’s eyes bloom even larger. “They think…you’re his enbyfriend.”
